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In other words, prior societal breakdowns now justify current and future ones. The advent of "no-fault" divorce turned marriage into a revolving door, with California leading the way. Now, we continue the trend with polygamy.

History is replete with the movers and shakers having multiple spouses, children by multiple partners, single marriage, plural marriage, you name it. And yet, here we are.

PS- Jerry Brown signed a law recognizing multiple parents, not multiple spouses.

I'm not the one who said that there is no difference between adults and children.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe you aren't getting some of the things you want in life because you're too stupid to grasp the difference between biology terms and a social construct?

I thought you had me on ignore.

BTW - For those who missed NJ's reference, in a discussion sometime ago I pointed out that biologically human beings and all mammals are either infant or adult and that our definition of the time between biological adulthood and legal adulthood has changed and varied over time, geography, and culture. He seems unable to process the difference between biology and sociology. But what would you expect from him?

History is replete with the movers and shakers having multiple spouses, children by multiple partners, single marriage, plural marriage, you name it. And yet, here we are.

Yes, and history is replete with the movers and shakers destroying their nations with their decadent conduct, and history also shows that when the conduct of the elites trickles down to the productive classes, the results for society as a whole are catastrophic. Yes, here we are, but at one time, there was Rome, Greece, the Italian city states of the Renaissance, Bourbon France... As Burke said, there is a lot of ruin in a nation, but eventually, you run out of the means to stave it off. We're at the point now where we can see the downward slope ahead of us, and you need to stop pushing us towards it.

Originally Posted by Novaheart

PS- Jerry Brown signed a law recognizing multiple parents, not multiple spouses.

People marry in order to provide stable environments for raising children. When you recognize multiple parents with equal standing, you lay the groundwork for multiple spouses, because those multiple parents will demand equal access. The test case will be a couple that wants to include a third party who has parental standing in their marriage, at which point the activists will be out in force. Of course, we all remember when gay activists swore that they had no interest in gay marriage, or military service, and when DADT was repealed, the left immediately turned around and demanded that transgenders be allowed to serve. We all know that progressives are pursuing an incremental strategy to eliminate sexual norms. You might as well acknowledge it.

That isn't the question. The question is if a child with three or four parents should have legal recognition for those parents, recognition which secures rights and responsibilities. The answer to that question is yes. I can't imagine how you could view it otherwise.

Ody has already answered this one, but I'll second his assessment and add: you inherently create instability the more "parents" you allow to have legal control over a child. It's bad enough when two biological parents fight over custody issues, and a child is made to move back and forth between parental residences. Put extra "parents" into that equation, and you're looking at an absolute nightmare for a child.

And before you jump in with the idea that a child can "get used to it" look at the figures for children of divorce in terms of their ability to succeed educationally, economically, and personally (relationships). Divorce forces all those numbers down. Add extra divorcing "parents" (and you know they will divorce--gay couples are already divorcing in California, where gay marriage was only legal for a few months in 2012 before the Prop 8 fights) and these poor children are going to have extremely serious mental health issues.

And when does a child "have" more than two parents? In the straight world, children have two bio parents and, sometimes, step-parents, but these step-parents don't have custody or legal parental rights (usually), and unless there are serious mental health or drug issues with the bio-parent, they shouldn't have. This new law opens up a whole new arena to manipulative step-parents who wants some kind of control over a children that are not theirs. The control of a bio-dad, for example, can be completely undercut if the abusive second husband mommie married gets some kind of parental rights under this new law and "disciplines" a child that is not his own. The potential for abuse increases exponentially and bio-parents will no longer be able to protect their children from strangers who claim "parentage" for one reason or another.

The only place this law makes any sense is in the gay world, where gays, who cannot have children, use other people's wombs, eggs or sperm to create children that are not biologically theirs. But even in the GLBT utopia of no natural parentage, a law giving rights to multiple parents is not going to play out well. Let's say Adam and Steve use Susie's womb like an Easy Bake Oven to "have a baby." The baby's egg is from Susie; the sperm may be from either Adam or Steve. Now I am totally opposed to the creation of children in this way, but if you're hell-bent on doing this, then Adam and Steve must be the legal parents, even though Adam and Susie (or Steve and Susie) are the real bio parents. The child's stability depends on a consistent two-parent family, where the two parents are a married couple who have a vested interest in what's best for the child and who have learned to compromise for the sake of their relationship and the child.

The last thing you need is a third party (Susie), who after having second thoughts (and experiencing a thoroughly natural and biologically necessary bonding with her baby) realizes that she wants a role in the child's life and becomes "parent" #3. Now you have a situation in which you have a committed couple against a third party. Disagreements about the child--and there are ALWAYS disagreements--can lead to 2-against-1 situations, which pit the parties against each other. The couple's stability is threatened with every disagreement in which one of them sides with Susie against the other, even though there may be good reasons for doing so. Or, perhaps, Adam and Steve are in lock step and it's Susie's opinion that get thrown under the bus again and again, creating real resentment. After all, she carried that child for 9 months, while Adam and Steve did no physical labor outside of one of them picking up some porn one afternoon and filling a plastic cup. If Susie has no recourse legally (since they are all parents), might she not do what so many parents who lose control do and kidnap the child?

You might argue that they are all mature adults, all friends, and that they should all work to get along. But people always have their bad moments, their immature moments, and--when there are 3 or more of them--their "us" against "them" moments. The more people you have raising a single child, the more opportunities there are for disagreements and in different permutations. In the end, you're creating havoc for a child. A two-parent household has its disagreements, but there are fewer people, fewer directions in which to disagree, and much more of a need to compromise since both the relationship and the child depend upon it. Even in adoption situations, this holds true for 2 people.

In the case of Adam and Steve, one of the men should simply adopt the baby (assuming the other is related) and Susie needs to be out of the picture. If she really yearns to stay, she should learn from that experience that giving birth is not something you do for money or for someone else's family. Adam and Steve will have to answer extremely uncomfortable questions later on (like "Who is my mommy?") and both men will have to go through what adoptive parents do when their beloved children still feel incomplete and go in search of their bio-parents. It's a thoroughly natural thing for a adopted kid to do, but, in the end, a steady background with two loving parents can do a lot to mitigate the loss.

The GLBT's brave new world of babies who don't belong to the people who bore them or whose chromosomes they share has created a new and overwhelming kind of havoc. The utter selfishness of gay couples to not consider the true effects on children of any laws (like multiple parenting) on the larger community and only consider their own needs is beyond comprehension. It can only come from people who are so wound up in their own grievances that they can't see other people or their needs, even children. This multiple parent law will wreak havoc on children, and not just from the gay community. It will bleed into the straight community, and there will be test cases of step-parents wanting "parental" rights as a 3rd party (or "parent") and winning them, much to the destruction of the child's stability.

Children should not be given "third" parents. If a child's bio-parent is severely abusive, a drug addict, or chronically absent geographically, then parental rights should be severed and a step-parent or grandparent be given parental rights for the good of the child. But under no circumstances should a third party be given parental rights when there are two other available and serviceable parents. (They needn't be perfect.)

About the only good thing I can see that might perhaps come out of this law is that both non-related parents (like Adam or Steve) and the surrogate bio-mom parent (like Susie) will have to come up with money for the child. This will mean that if any of them leave the situation, they will still be hounded by the California courts for child support. This might make some people think twice about getting involved in these 3-way parenting situations.

Other than that, it's bloody hell for children. And Robert Oscar Lopez gets that, which is why I read him and bring him over here.

How long after Christianity (Messianic Judaism) came to Rome do we mark as the "fall" of Rome?

Assuming an approximate date of 40 AD for Paul's letter to the Romans, we're looking at about 436 years after the introduction of Christianity for the official fall of Rome. Christianity propped up a falling empire. The imperial shift itself was a result of a rotting and vulnerable Republic which fell to an imperial dictatorship before the advent of Christianity. Heavy handed centralized control kept the provinces in line for several hundred years more, but administering an empire has its costs.

Assuming an approximate date of 40 AD for Paul's letter to the Romans, we're looking at about 436 years after the introduction of Christianity for the official fall of Rome. Christianity propped up a falling empire. The imperial shift itself was a result of a rotting and vulnerable Republic which fell to an imperial dictatorship before the advent of Christianity. Heavy handed centralized control kept the provinces in line for several hundred years more, but administering an empire has its costs.

Sorry that I was too general. I usually ask "How long after Christian/Judaism was made the state religion of Rome until the point we mark as the "fall of Rome"? The answer to that one is much more concrete. 27 February 380 - August 24th, 410.